1 the Making of Regional Systems: the Tapajós/Madeira And

The Making of Regional Systems: the Tapajós/Madeira and Trombetas/Nhamundá regions in the Lower Brazilian Amazon, 17th and 18th centuries. Mark Harris Abstract Building on Neil Whitehead’s work in northern South America, this article considers the formations of two different deep forest regional networks. Though these Amerindian spaces have origins in the pre-colonial past, this article analyses their shaping in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a period when they confronted colonial agents. There were other regional systems along the course of the Amazon and its many tributaries that were a part of a similar historical process of re-founding identities and claims on land and people involving challenges to leadership and political organization. Following Hal Langfur, we can term this general making of spaces a re- territorialisation. Critical social relations include those between Amerindian ethnic entities and their leaders, soldiers and missionaries. This article focuses on a key spatial relation between Amerindian settlements and the mission, or partially colonised village, which had an indirect or direct contact with each other. This article will examine two contrasting Amerindian spaces, the Tapajó and Kondurí, on the Amazon River during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These areas were 1 shaped by Amerindian spatial and political activities as well as the Portuguese colonial world centered in Belem. A principal way these distinct spaces came to be articulated was through the descimento, the “descent” or relocation of Indians to colonial spaces Sommer (2005). These relocation efforts started and ended in small fragile settlements on or near the main river.1 Colonial agents saw these places as gateways to the sertão, the Amerindian spaces upriver and in the forests. The relations within and limits of these Amerindian spaces, however, changed as alliances shifted and conflict erupted. Borrowing from Hal Langfur, we can characterize these native spatial reorientations as a territorialisation strategy to deal with the multiple fronts on which colonization took place (Langfur (2006: 298). These regional systems of inter-ethnic relations were made by Amerindians as they acted in response to movements of other Indians and to incursions from missionaries and soldiers.2 The two regional systems differed in historical and cultural character. One was expansive, with distinct groups attempting to benefit from new conditions amidst relations that fluctuated during war and peace. The other focused inwards and sought to limit its engagement with the colonial world after a period of contact. The aim of this article is to show why and how these two spaces differed.3 Figure 1. Map showing the eastern part of the Amazon. The Amerindian relations addressed here grew out of a long history that lies beyond the consideration of this article.4 Archaeological evidence and first contact narratives support the existence of large-scale hierarchically organized societies along the riverbanks of the Amazon in the first part of the sixteenth century (Roosevelt 1993, Heckenberger and Neves 2009). However a hundred years later these societies and their impressive 2 structures were no longer recorded.5 Had these people retreated from the main trunk of the river to avoid further contact with Europeans? Or were there other reasons for their displacement unrelated to the small, irregular white presence in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries? Archaeological studies suggest that riverine polities like the Tapajó and Marajó were already declining (Roosevelt 1993).6 Nevertheless, with the Portuguese drive up the river from the 1610s, a new series of spatial practices and strategies had been set in motion.7 Though it is well known that there were refuge zones (see Espelt-Bombín in this volume) where groups went to escape Europeans, there has been little attempt to systematically document the moves that led people to flee (Meggers 1971). Moreover, despite recent archaeological work that has begun to cast doubt on the demographic significance of the main trunk of the Amazon River, scholars have presumed that this area was the site of the largest and most significant societies in the region, relegating the rest of the Amazon basin to the status of wilderness or refuge (Heckenberger et al 1999, Heckenberger 2008, Rostain 2012). I suggest this is a European invention that obscures other spatial configurations. If reports from seventeenth-century missionaries and administrators are correct, the population was more evenly spread throughout the Amazon basin.8 Certainly, caution is advised in taking these sources at face value. Nevertheless, there is evidence to support the proposition that there were diverse centers of Amerindian life in the period before conquest.9 Thus, a regional system in the deep forest was not simply a refuge zone. Belém was undoubtedly the center of the Portuguese world in the Amazon. Colonizing efforts brought a set of references and activities, registered by the terms sertão and descimento. Portuguese and Amerindian spatial strategies and practices comprised two 3 distinct spheres of activity – multiple spheres if the Amerindian category is broken down further. Villages on the banks of the river served as meeting points where these spheres converged in trade, work, settlement and kinship. The very materiality of the riverine domain shaped these interactions in a way that came to distinguish the Amazon, and the Guianas, from other colonial and Amerindian spaces of South America. This disentangling of the Lusitanian and native then involves a rethinking of the significance of rivers and the role of the sertão in Amazonian history. By addressing the historical character of these assemblages, I seek to build on Neil Whitehead’s work (e.g. 2001). He distinguishes three colonial period Amerindian formations in the northeastern Guayana-Caribbean area (Whitehead 2001: 134). A similar grouping can be made for the Lower Amazon. First are those groups that emerged directly from European categorizations. In the Amazon, these were the Tapuyas, a general term for the enemies of the Tupinambá, who spoke at least Arawak and Carib languages and mostly, but not exclusively, lived on the northern banks. The second were those that were relatively large political entities at the time of European arrival but failed to endure – perhaps because they were weakening after centuries of development or because they failed to negotiate the demands for slaves and forest products. These groups may have also fragmented and re-territorialized, like the Tupinambá. The third set were those that emerged as an indirect consequence of European contact, who may have had little interaction with Europeans until late in the colonial period. Still these groups, such as the Mundurucu, were new amalgamations of old networks (Whitehead 1993, also Farage 1992: 110-15 and Menendez 1992). This article uses a range of sources to reconstruct the two regional systems. Many of these documents date from the early to mid-eighteenth century. I draw on Jesuit and 4 Franciscan documents in Rome, Evora and Lisbon. In addition, I employ administrative material from Portuguese colonial archives in Lisbon and Belém, Brazil. Together, these form a diverse and frustratingly incomplete set of resources that allow us to access the events and people of the time. Portuguese spatial settlement and the emergence of a new kind of regional society along the rivers. The Amazon was a colonial space different to the rest of Brazil (Boxer 1962, Chambouleyron 2005, Sommer 2005). The Portuguese established a colonial presence in the Amazon later and governed it separately. The Indian presence was stronger and the region’s exports derived mainly from extractive rather than agricultural activities.10 Most of all, geography – huge networks of rivers – differentiated it. Though the region was massive and poor, the Portuguese managed to draw labor and commodities down to Belém. The riverine space was critical to establishing a colonial presence; yet, as Sommer argues, “relationships, rather than the occupation of space, determined the frontier.” (Sommer 2000: 13). Throughout the seventeenth century, colonizers were dependent on Indians for nearly every aspect of life in the Amazon. By the mid-eighteenth century, a class of sertanistas (hinterland adventurers with a military or missionary background) had emerged with strong personal links to Amerindian groups on important tributaries. Although these people acted privately they aided the Portuguese Crown in strengthening colonial authority (Davidson 1970). Historians David Sweet and Barbara Sommer have shown how individuals used kinship connections established through marriage to travel across ethnic frontiers, reinforcing colonial authority as they captured slaves and secured goods in the hinterland (Sweet 1974, Sweet 1994, Sommer 2005). The result of these activities was a haphazard and unintentional articulation between native societies and 5 sertanistas, or cunhamenas as they were also known.11 Through plundering and the strength of relations with Indians, these people established a new society that was Portuguese in name but, in practice, was something quite different. These actions shaped a unique regional society on the river and along its banks. Riverbank forts, trading posts, and missions held special significance as entry and exit nodes from the riverine highways.12 They opened out on to an Indian world full of economic and spiritual

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